kite
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "kite", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "kite" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "kite" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
kite is aEnglishnoun. It means: A bird of prey of the family Accipitridae. Pronounced /kaɪt/. Often confused with KT and kmt.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kite |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kaɪt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #13,945 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for kite is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kaɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #13,945 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for kite, with forms such as "ikte", "kiet", and "kitte". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "KT", "kmt", "knee", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is from Middle English kyte, kīte, kete (“a kite endemic to Europe, especially the red kite (Milvus milvus)”), from Old English cȳta (“kite; bittern”), from Proto-West Germanic *kūtijō, diminutive of Proto-Germanic *kūts (“bird of prey”), from Prot… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is kite, spelled K-I-T-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A bird of prey of the family Accipitridae.
- 2A bird of prey of the family Accipitridae.
- 3A bird of prey of the family Accipitridae.
- 4A bird of prey of the family Accipitridae.
- 5A rapacious person.
- 6A lightweight toy or other device, traditionally flat and shaped like a triangle with a segment of a circle attached to its base or like a quadrilateral (see sense 9), carried on the wind and tethered and controlled from the ground by one or more lines.
- 7A tethered object which deflects its position in a medium by obtaining lift and drag in reaction with its relative motion in the medium.
- 8A planetary configuration wherein one planet of a grand trine is in opposition to an additional fourth planet.
- 9A blank cheque; a fraudulent cheque, such as one issued even though there are insufficient funds to honour it, or one that has been altered without authorization.
- 10An accommodation bill (“a bill of exchange endorsed by a reputable third party acting as a guarantor, as a favour and without compensation”).
- 11A rider who is good at climbs but less good at descents.
- 12A polygon resembling the shape of a traditional toy kite (sense 3): a quadrilateral having two pairs of edges of equal length, the edges of each pair touching each other at one end.
- 13An aeroplane or aircraft.
- 14In a square-rigged ship: originally a sail positioned above a topsail; later a lightweight sail set above the topgallants, such as a studding sail or a jib topsail.
- 15A spinnaker (“supplementary sail to a mainsail”).
- 16The brill (Scophthalmus rhombus), a type of flatfish.
- 17A (usually concealed) letter or oral message, especially one passed illegally into, within, or out of a prison.
Etymology
The noun is from Middle English kyte, kīte, kete (“a kite endemic to Europe, especially the red kite (Milvus milvus)”), from Old English cȳta (“kite; bittern”), from Proto-West Germanic *kūtijō, diminutive of Proto-Germanic *kūts (“bird of prey”), from Proto-Indo-European *gewH-d- (“to cry, screech”). The English word is cognate with Scots kyt, kyte (“kite; bird of prey”), Middle High German kiuzelīn, kützlīn (“owling”) (modern German Kauz (“owl”)). Possibly a doublet of coot. Sense 3 (“lightweight toy”) is from the fact that it hovers in the air like the bird. The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ikte,kiet,kitte,kkite,ktie
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for kite
Misspelling Variants of "kite"
Frequency rank: #13,945 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter K in our English index: